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Post by Mister Spaceman on Feb 12, 2019 15:22:29 GMT -5
My wife and I watched Streets of Fire last night, from Walter Hill. I saw it in theaters, in 1984, based solely on the strength of the music video for the song "Tonight is What It Mean to Be Young" (a typical Jim Steinman rock opera piece). I hated it in the theater and almost walked out, bored to tears by the wooden acting of Michael Pare and a rather bland Diane Lane (who was a rookie). Amy Madigan, Rick Moranis and Willem Dafoe were the only decent elements (Deborah Van Valkenburgh was good) and the few good scenes are oases in a desert of neon and darkness. However, the soundtrack is awesome and I always loved it. So, after watching Warriors, not long ago, I had the impetus to try Streets of Fire again to see if my 52 year-old self thought differently than my 17 year-old self. Nope. Still a really bad movie, with really bad acting and a nonsensical script. The music is still awesome and Dafoe, Madigan and Moranis (and DVV) are the only things worth watching. What's really bad are the "performances" of Diane Lane, as singer Ellen Aim, in the opening and closing concerts. Lane is too focused on lipsynching and is unable to emote as a singer would, especially given the songs she is supposed to be singing are the Steinman epics. It really needed something like a taylor Dane or Bonnie tyler (or Ellen Foley, from Bat Out Of Hell) to do those justice, really selling the song with their body language. Definitely a product of it's time, trying to be Walter Hill's fantasy of the 50s. Still, Willem Dafoe was mesmerizing. Too bad the whole film wasn't carried by him... I also saw this one in the theater when I was 17 and hated it. On leaving the theater, my companion said he liked it, explaining, "I expected a rock-n-roll fable and I got a rock-n-roll fable." My obvious response was, "But did you get a good rock-n-roll fable?"
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2019 23:26:36 GMT -5
Love Affair 1939It was a very charming movie and I enjoyed the great chemistry of Boyer and Dunne in this excellent movie on board a ship filled with tension, romance, charm, and with a dash of humor that hits your soul. I missed the first 10 minutes of this film and that's didn't matter me at all. Involved a French (Boyer) Playboy and a Nightclub (Dunne) Singer that filled the air with lots of memories and delights the audience with timeless good feeling, love story and unforgettable scenes in which the spectators ever feel drawn into play that made it quite real with tragedy that affects Terry McKay that played by Dunne. I really paid more attention to Irene Dunne this time and as well the magnificent Maria Ouspenskaya that played the Grandmother and in the last time that I saw this movie ... I did not. It was a great film and this is the only film that I saw today on TCM.
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 15, 2019 0:13:38 GMT -5
My wife and i just finished watching The Villain, with Kirk Douglas, Ann Margaret, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The whole thing is basically a live action Road Runner & Wile E Coyote riff, which pretty much gets by on Kirk Douglas' charm and a pretty funny horse. The director is Hal Needham, who was a stuntman and stunt coordinator (and second unit director) who got elevated to the directors chair, with a couple of Burt Reynolds hits, and some really bad movies besides ( Megaforce, anyone?) Ow, he can film a stunt; but, watching things, I kept thinking how Mel Brooks would have approached this. What's more, Needham missed the obvious details for the gags, like using the name Acme on things, having the gags build into a chain reaction of mishaps, and breaking the 4th wall; all hallmarks of the Chuck Jones cartoons. It's still a fun movie, but, it could have been a classic. One thing is for sure though, Ann Margaret's breasts were hitched nearly up to her ears... Needham favors a lot of down angles, when filming her, if you know what I mean. Yesterday, we watched The Princess Bride, which is a favorite of mine; but, she just wasn't as into it. Inconceivable! You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2019 1:50:10 GMT -5
On Svengoolie, the played The Creature of the Black Lagoon tonight in honor of recent death of Julia Adams. I've probably watched this movie at least over dozen times and always entertaining. Before that my favorite comedy ... The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on TCM A timeless comedy that never failed me.
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 17, 2019 2:46:58 GMT -5
The wife and I watched the two Brady Bunch theatrical movies (there was a tv movie sequel, which wasn't up to snuff). Really great fun, that both pokes fun at the show and pays tribute to it, which is no easy balancing act. i saw both in theaters; but, she only saw them when I first showed them to her.
When I saw A Very Brady Sequel in the theater, with friends and I was the only person in the theater busting out loud when Tim Matheson starts tripping and sees the Brady cartoon. I guess I was the only one old enough to remember it (complete with pandas Ping and Pong and the minah bird, Maron). It was also cool that Carol's possible former husband was Johnny Quest (and Jace!).
I love the dance scenes, in the first, when Marcia turns up with Davy Jones and the band starts playing his song in a grunge style. That and all of the female teachers running down to worship at Davey.
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Post by Mister Spaceman on Feb 17, 2019 14:36:35 GMT -5
The wife and I watched the two Brady Bunch theatrical movies (there was a tv movie sequel, which wasn't up to snuff). Really great fun, that both pokes fun at the show and pays tribute to it, which is no easy balancing act. i saw both in theaters; but, she only saw them when I first showed them to her. When I saw A Very Brady Sequel in the theater, with friends and I was the only person in the theater busting out loud when Tim Matheson starts tripping and sees the Brady cartoon. I guess I was the only one old enough to remember it (complete with pandas Ping and Pong and the minah bird, Maron). It was also cool that Carol's possible former husband was Johnny Quest (and Jace!). I love the dance scenes, in the first, when Marcia turns up with Davy Jones and the band starts playing his song in a grunge style. That and all of the female teachers running down to worship at Davey. Yeah, those movies are very clever, funny takes on the series. Great blend of satire and nostalgia.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Feb 17, 2019 15:48:27 GMT -5
The two Brady movies are nothing short of brilliant - very gentle, loving satires of the original series; also, if you watch them back to back (which I did once), it's almost like watching all six seasons of the Brady Bunch distilled into 3 hours.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2019 22:13:51 GMT -5
The two Brady movies are nothing short of brilliant - very gentle, loving satires of the original series; also, if you watch them back to back (which I did once), it's almost like watching all six seasons of the Brady Bunch distilled into 3 hours. Good Points ... I can see that.
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Post by berkley on Feb 18, 2019 1:19:18 GMT -5
I saw It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the theatre when I was a very small kid in the 60s. At that age (not sure what year I saw it, but I'd say I was somewhere in the 6 to 8 or 9 range) it was just the kind of thing I liked - lots of crazy shenanigans and people running around.
Never understood the appeal of the Brady Bunch or 8 is Enough. Or the Waltons. Most of those 70s "family shows" struck me as unbearably saccharine and false. Though I did used to watch A Family Affair, from a few years earlier - perhaps that was the difference, I was the wrong age when those 70s ones were at their height.
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 18, 2019 2:16:19 GMT -5
I saw It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the theatre when I was a very small kid in the 60s. At that age (not sure what year I saw it, but I'd say I was somewhere in the 6 to 8 or 9 range) it was just the kind of thing I liked - lots of crazy shenanigans and people running around. Never understood the appeal of the Brady Bunch or 8 is Enough. Or the Waltons. Most of those 70s "family shows" struck me as unbearably saccharine and false. Though I did used to watch A Family Affair, from a few years earlier - perhaps that was the difference, I was the wrong age when those 70s ones were at their height. The Bradys had a goofy charm. 8 is Enough I watched for a couple of seasons; but, was never that big on it. I wouldn't describe it as saccharine, as they were a bit more argumentative than the Bradys or Buffy & Jody and the gang. The Waltons was CBS, which we had trouble tuning in, so I only saw it a bit, when visiting relatives. My wife was watching the whole thing, recently. And Little House (which I did watch for the first 4 or 5 seasons). There is a certain warmth and comfort that comes with the Waltons and Little House, with some historical elements, as well as wholesome values and familial bonds. A little goes a long way, though. In both cases, they had fine actors who developed great characters, and mixed liberal doses of humor with the drama. With the Waltons, I have a bit of a soft spot, as it reminded me, a bit, of my father's family. he grew up in the Depression and war years, on a farm, in deep southern Illinois. The land was hilly and clay soil and not as productive as in central illinois (where I live and where my mother grew up, on a farm, and then in a city). My grandfather was also a Baptist preacher and my father had two brothers. One grew up to earn a PHD and work for the government, as a soil engineer; the other farmed and worked for a telephone company, as a lineman, after a stint in the Army. It is a very close-knit family (though my grandparents are long gone and my father and his brothers have all passed away, in the last ten years), with a lot of warmth and humor, and a lot of sitting around and talking and telling stories, playing music and singing, and plenty of hunting and fishing for recreation. The Waltons had a darn good cast of character actors, in the main roles (the younger kids were a different story) and, in a time of great turmoil , they presented a link to a past of stronger bonds and more noble battles. On the surface, it would seem a conservative series; and, yet, it was very New Deal in its politics, especially since Will Geer had been involved with Woody Guthrie and liberal causes and was blackballed because of it, while Ellen Corby had appeared in Frank Capra movies and was involved in liberal causes (as were Michael Learned and Ralph Waite). Little House combined the pioneer history with some of the Bonanza charm. it had nice doses of character humor, especially from characters like Mr Edwards and the Olesons (and Pa Ingalls, from time to time). It was a bit more balanced, in the early days, before it got really preachy. Both shows had a rural feel that was familiar to me that wasn't there with things like the Beverly Hillbillies or Green Acres, where they were more the butt of jokes. The Brady Bunch was more of a kid show, really, and you have to look at it with the innocent eyes of a kid to not start harping on the poor logic and flaws to the whole thing. Over the years, the reruns became a sort of campy silliness kind of thing (much like Schwartz's other series, Gilligan's island). The movies capture that, as they are definitely the POV of having seen endless re-runs. Besides, when you only have 3 channels (not counting PBS) and you have trouble tuning in one, you'd be amazed what you will sit through. I loved nanny & the Professor, as a kid; but, tried watching it when the FX network launched and featured early 70s tv shows (including Family Affair) and it just felt like a poor man's Bewitched. Family Affair was even schmaltzier, though Mr French and Uncle Bill helped that show tremendously.
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Post by berkley on Feb 18, 2019 5:51:41 GMT -5
Mr French and Uncle Bill are the only two characters I can really picture from A family Affair, but I have no doubt you're right that it was even schmaltzier than the similar shows I disliked so much later on. The child characters I barely remember at all. I was pretty young when it was on and retain only vague impressions.
One thing I must say about the Waltons - even though I didn't watch the show regularly or by choice, I must have seen enough in bits and pieces to have an idea about some of the characters, because I found it made the appearance of the guy who played the father on that show as the vicious slave-owner in Roots all the more powerful. I always thought that great credit was due to the actor to take on that role at a time when I imagine (accurately or not) a lot of people would have advised him it was career suicide to play, not so much against his type as the benevolent, patriarch but the very darkest side of that image, since a slave-owner or overseer might be seen as a patriarchal figure in the most negative sense.
Interesting to hear about your feeling of connection with the rural settings pictured in some of those shows. I felt no rapport at all with them, even though both my parents came from isolated fishing villages that we visited every year as kids (I grew up in a large town or mid-sized town . But from that perspective you could say that I felt alienated from everything on tv, since nothing from my background was ever reflected there, apart from a few local programs.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Feb 18, 2019 6:57:26 GMT -5
For me, it's not so much that I like the Brady Bunch as it is that from early childhood until my early teens, I'd watched every single episode of the show about 4-5 times each. The show was in heavy rotation in syndication where I grew up - that and the Flintstones. In fact, all during that period (mid-'70s to early '80s) there was never a time when those two shows weren't running, in contrast to other common staples of syndication, like Gilligan's Island, Batman, Star Trek, etc., which would get removed from the rotation for 6 month to a year before being aired again. So they're really imprinted onto my memory, and as such those two movies really spoke to me - they were indeed spoofs, but at the same time they really hit me with a dose of nostalgia.
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Post by Mister Spaceman on Feb 18, 2019 11:31:48 GMT -5
For me, it's not so much that I like the Brady Bunch as it is that from early childhood until my early teens, I'd watched every single episode of the show about 4-5 times each. The show was in heavy rotation in syndication where I grew up - that and the Flintstones. In fact, all during that period (mid-'70s to early '80s) there was never a time when those two shows weren't running, in contrast to other common staples of syndication, like Gilligan's Island, Batman, Star Trek, etc., which would get removed from the rotation for 6 month to a year before being aired again. So they're really imprinted onto my memory, and as such those two movies really spoke to me - they were indeed spoofs, but at the same time they really hit me with a dose of nostalgia. Yes, the whims of syndication had a big impact on my TV viewing habits in the Seventies as well. For me it was The Brady Bunch, Star Trek, Get Smart, The Flintstones, Gilligan's Island, and Bewitched. (If only Batman had been in that rotation!) All of them hold nostalgic charm for me today except for Get Smart, which I never really liked.
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Post by rberman on Feb 18, 2019 12:11:11 GMT -5
I finally saw Mad Max for the first time last night at my teen son's behest. Mel Gibson was so young! I could barely recognize him, though he already had the piercing eyes for which he is famous. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for his family to get fridged, and it finally happened, cementing his transformation into a sociopath like the ones he was hunting. His wife did make some pretty poor safety choices throughout the film, considering the lawless world in which she lived and died. Police were called "The Bronze" due to their badges; I guess this is where nightclub The Bronze gets its name in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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Post by rberman on Feb 18, 2019 12:21:44 GMT -5
My wife and I watched Streets of Fire last night, from Walter Hill. I saw it in theaters, in 1984, based solely on the strength of the music video for the song "Tonight is What It Mean to Be Young" (a typical Jim Steinman rock opera piece). I hated it in the theater and almost walked out, bored to tears by the wooden acting of Michael Pare and a rather bland Diane Lane (who was a rookie). Amy Madigan, Rick Moranis and Willem Dafoe were the only decent elements (Deborah Van Valkenburgh was good) and the few good scenes are oases in a desert of neon and darkness. However, the soundtrack is awesome and I always loved it. So, after watching Warriors, not long ago, I had the impetus to try Streets of Fire again to see if my 52 year-old self thought differently than my 17 year-old self. Nope. Still a really bad movie, with really bad acting and a nonsensical script. The music is still awesome and Dafoe, Madigan and Moranis (and DVV) are the only things worth watching. What's really bad are the "performances" of Diane Lane, as singer Ellen Aim, in the opening and closing concerts. Lane is too focused on lipsynching and is unable to emote as a singer would, especially given the songs she is supposed to be singing are the Steinman epics. It really needed something like a taylor Dane or Bonnie tyler (or Ellen Foley, from Bat Out Of Hell) to do those justice, really selling the song with their body language. Definitely a product of it's time, trying to be Walter Hill's fantasy of the 50s. Still, Willem Dafoe was mesmerizing. Too bad the whole film wasn't carried by him... I also saw this one in the theater when I was 17 and hated it. On leaving the theater, my companion said he liked it, explaining, "I expected a rock-n-roll fable and I got a rock-n-roll fable." My obvious response was, "But did you get a good rock-n-roll fable?" My recollections of the film are similar. Jim Steinman has made a career from amping 50s rock-and-roll tropes up into an American mythology. He was working on the musical that became "Bat Out of Hell" since the early 1970s, feting music from 15 years earlier, and shaping his work into the Meat Loaf album of the late 1970s. He's finally realized "Bat Out of Hell" as the grand stage spectacular that he envisioned originally; I saw it on London's West End two years ago. It was indeed quite a spectacle, with all his bombastic songs wedded to a paper-thin plot based on Peter Pan. I enjoyed it but also found it thematically sad that his central thesis of "Rock and Roll, young forever!" has proved not remotely to be true; the rock demographic aged with Steinman and are now in the latter half of life muttering about that noise that kids call music today.
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